The Asgard
An ancient and technologically advanced species, the Asgard are one of Earth’s most important
allies.
Residents of a distant galaxy, the Asgard are sometimes convinced to wield their power
in the Milky Way in order to protect the innocent.
But they faced an equally powerful enemy of their own, and their final fate would leave
the Stargate universe – and the planet Earth – changed forever.
Many thousands of years ago the Asgard were members of an alliance of four advanced races,
along with the Nox, the Furlings, and the Ancients.
Today the Nox are somewhat isolationist, while the other two have vanished.
Only the Asgard remained.
Led by a High Council, the Asgard are highly rational beings.
They resemble Roswell “Greys,” and admit to visiting Earth in the past.
Some scientists (such as Loki) have conducted off-the-books experiments on humans.
The people of Earth had to prove themselves worthy of interacting with the Asgard face-to-face
before a true alliance could be forged.
The first two times that SG-1 encountered Supreme Commander Thor he was a hologram,
programmed to appear to the Cimmerians as the hammer-wielding Norse god of ancient myth.
Only after Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter solved a series of puzzles did Thor reveal
his true form.
After a later encounter with Jack O’Neill – whose mind had become an unwitting vessel
of the knowledge of the Ancients – the Asgard concluded that humans indeed show “great
potential.”
Soon after it was the Asgard who intervened on Earth’s behalf before the combined power
of the Goa’uld System Lords.
Thor helped to negotiate Earth’s inclusion in the Protected Planets Treaty.
This placed Earth under Asgard protection, prohibiting a direct assault on the planet
– at least in theory.
But this show of force in our galaxy was largely based on a bluff: the Asgard just didn’t
have the military resources to commit to a protracted fight against the System Lords.
By the end of that year, Jack O’Neill and SG-1 learned why: in their home galaxy the
Asgard were under siege by a seemingly unstoppable foe.
The Replicators are technological “bugs,” a swarm of artificial life forms that consume
advanced technology in order to spread.
They proved to be the Asgard’s Achilles heel.
Eventually the Replicators took over their homeworld and evolved to a nanite-based, humanoid
form.
All hope seemed to be lost.
But with help from SG-1’s out-of-the-box thinking the Asgard won some small victories,
temporarily trapping the Replicators inside a time-dilation field.
It was another, more basic problem that would finally prove to be the Asgard’s undoing.
Over millennia the species had come to rely upon cloning in order to reproduce.
No new Asgard have been born for generations.
Instead new bodies are cloned as “blank slates,” and the conscious minds of their
people transplanted from a dying body.
But the cloning process was never perfected.
The result was that Asgard society suffered from diminishing returns.
Unable to solve the problem, and unwilling to allow their technology to fall into the
wrong hands, the Asgard entered into an unprecedented compact to commit mass suicide.
Gathering together on the planet Orilla, they would share their advancements with Earth
– and then … end it all.
So far as Stargate Command knew, all that survived of the Asgard was now on board the
U.S.S.
Odyssey: energy shields and transporters, weapons technology, and the galaxy’s most
advanced computer core – preserving the entire history and collected knowledge of
the ancient species.
Finally, humans were acknowledged as the “Fifth Race,” ready to stand on the stage of galactic
history.
Somehow the universe seemed more empty without the Asgard in it.
The last of the four great races was gone, leaving it to Earth and its own young allies
to fight against oppression.
In the distant Pegasus Galaxy, however, an old ember was still glowing.
Daniel Jackson and Rodney McKay were kidnapped by a previously unknown force of heavily-armored
warriors.
They discovered that this new power is, in fact, a small colony of Asgard who broke away
some 10,000 years ago.
Able to conduct off-book experiments of their own, they made significant progress in overcoming
the cloning problem.
This was not to be a happy reunion, however.
And Dr. Jackson was not eager to celebrate the rebirth of a species.
This group of Asgard – thought to call themselves the “Vanir” – were not allies but a
potential new threat, prepared to take any steps necessary to ensure their own survival.
Even if it means annihilating peaceful worlds.
Visit the Stargate Omnipedia at GateWorld.net to read more about the Asgard!
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